Typical Challenges in Manufacturing Projects and Ways to Address Them

The manufacturing industry faces numerous challenges that can affect the success of manufacturing projects, from supply chain issues to risks related to digital technology integration. These challenges make it difficult to deliver these projects successfully, as they may disrupt the workflow causing delays and cost overruns.

In this article, we’ll explore some of the most common roadblocks for manufacturing projects as well as suggest actionable recommendations for addressing them. Read on to arm yourself with the right knowledge and tools, and drive your manufacturing projects to successful delivery.

Top 5 Challenges Affecting Manufacturing Projects

1. The Impact of Supply Chain Disruptions.

Supply chains were significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and haven’t completely recovered since then. In addition, current geopolitical tension and military conflicts cannot but impact their resilience. The manufacturing industry significantly depends on supply chains, as the production process requires seamless procurement of raw materials, components, spare parts, etc. Therefore, when required raw materials or components aren’t available when needed, this will lead to delays in the entire manufacturing process, which in turn makes it difficult to complete the manufacturing project on time. Time is money, so project delays will inevitably lead to exceeding the project budget. As an alternative, manufacturers can source required materials from other suppliers, which will also increase production costs. Sometimes, disruptions can affect product quality; for example, sourcing materials from alternative suppliers that fail to meet quality standards may lead to producing poor-quality goods.

2. The Increasing Demand for Products.

The post-pandemic era is marked by the increasing demand for goods. On the one hand, this involves growth opportunities. On the other hand, it can be challenging, and here’s why.

The ability to meet the growing demand for products requires additional resources. If a company cannot allocate more resources, they will have to overload their existing employees and the manufacturing facility. In turn, this will lead to reduced performance, bottlenecks, equipment failure, delays in production, etc.
It’s difficult to meet the increasing demand with existing supply chain challenges.
Growing demand also increases competition, which imposes high requirements on manufacturers: they must complete their projects within time, budget, and resource constraints and at the same time deliver more high-quality output.

3. Workforce Shortages.

Manufacturing companies continue to face significant challenges related to a lack of human resources. These difficulties involve an aging workforce, a shortage of skilled employees, competition for digital talent with companies from other industries, and ongoing employee retention. Workforce shortages combined with the increased demand for products add extra complexity to manufacturing project management.

Labor shortages lead to reduced production efficiency, as the current workers are able to complete smaller amounts of work. Increasing their workloads won’t solve the problem and may lead to even more negative consequences—making mistakes, the need to rework, and increasing costs. Workforce shortages also increase labor costs, as the demand for skilled employees exceeds the supply. Finally, a lack of skilled workers or current employees’ skills gaps make it challenging for manufacturers to implement advanced technologies and take advantage of their integration.

4. The Complexity of Production Workflows.

As a rule, manufacturing projects include complex processes, e.g., design, prototyping, production, quality control, logistics, etc. These processes are interdependent with multiple resources involved, so they require effective coordination, planning, and control. Poor management of these workflows will result in reduced productivity and bottlenecks, which in turn will lead to increasing manufacturing projects’ lead times. Finally, complex workflows increase the likelihood of making errors, which leads to reduced quality of the manufactured products.

5. Risk and Uncertainty.

Manufacturing projects are subject to various risks: e.g., supply chain disruptions, market fluctuation, equipment failure, safety risks, and others. These risks require the closest attention and purposeful risk management efforts. At the same time, these risks go hand in hand with uncertainty, i.e., some events cannot be predicted accurately, but can significantly disrupt the project flow. When project managers don’t prepare for risks and uncertainties, these events can cause serious roadblocks for project success, causing missed deadlines, increasing project costs, or affecting the quality of the delivered product.

So, how can project managers address all these manufacturing challenges and lead their projects to successful completion? Read the next section to learn more.

Addressing Challenges in Manufacturing Projects

To be able to handle all these challenges effectively, manufacturers should implement a variety of measures. While they cannot resolve manufacturing sector obstacles like supply chain disruption or influence market fluctuation, they can make a project management process resilient to disruptions and increase the probability of finishing it successfully. Let’s take a closer look.

1. Avoid deterministic plans.

Manufacturing projects require flexibility to stand against sudden changes like delays caused by supply chain disruptions, equipment failures, or shifting customer demands. Developing flexible plans involves incorporating time and capacity buffers and avoiding strict deterministic project and production schedules. Implementing adaptive planning helps project teams quickly respond to obstacles and keep projects on track. With this approach, you’ll be able to minimize downtime and continue working on projects even in the face of disruptions.

2. Increase resource efficiency.

Resource efficiency is the key to ensuring a seamless and efficient production process. It’s also crucial when you need to deliver more output with the same resources. Below are the ways to achieve resource efficiency.

Allocate resources based on their availability; make sure that resource workload corresponds to their capacity. This will prevent them from overloading and becoming bottlenecks hampering the project flow.
When it comes to human resources, facilitate employees’ reskilling and upskilling—this will increase employee engagement and productivity.
Monitor resource performance to timely detect improper workload: both overload and idleness reduce resource productivity.
Prioritize work: a lack of correct prioritization will result in bad multitasking and reduced efficiency.

Increasing resource efficiency will help manufacturing project managers cope with the increasing demand and overcome the negative impact of labor shortages.

3. Eliminate bottlenecks.

Bottlenecks are the most disruptive phenomenon in the project management process. Only one bottleneck can put the brake on the whole project environment’s work, especially when there are multiple projects running concurrently. The source of bottlenecks is improper workload. Let’s say, in an attempt to meet the increasing demand, you assign more work to employees or force equipment work to the max. This situation will highly likely result in equipment breakdown or burnout of employees who cannot cope with their workload. These resources will become bottlenecks. So, instead of higher productivity, it will turn into delays and cost overruns.

Here are the tips that will help you prevent and eliminate bottlenecks in the workflow:

Allocate resources based on their available capacity and leave a capacity buffer for uncertainties;
Focus on regular monitoring of resource performance, as bottlenecks appear on the resources level;
Upon detecting a bottleneck, take immediate measures to eliminate its cause.

Preventing and eliminating bottlenecks will ensure a seamless project and production flow and increase resource efficiency.

4. Plan resource capacity.

Accurate capacity planning is essential for aligning production output with market demand. Manufacturing project managers must be sure that their workforce, machinery, or other resources can meet the demand without being overloaded before a production process starts. Otherwise, overloaded resources will turn into bottlenecks that won’t be able to deliver the required output. What do you need to plan resource capacity accurately?

A comprehensive visibility of all resources along with data on their availability, and capacity;
Accurate demand forecast;
Developing ways to bridge the gap between resource demand and available supply.

Having all this information at hand, you’ll be able to balance the demand and supply, ensure optimal utilization of available resources, prevent bottlenecks, and ensure customer satisfaction.

5. Planning for risks and uncertainties.

As we’ve noted above, risk management is crucial in manufacturing projects due to the complex nature of the production environment. Poor risk management and neglecting uncertainty can lead to serious issues in the project flow. To manage risks in manufacturing projects, you should take the following actions:

Prioritize risks according to their probability and impact;
Use scenario planning to test risk mitigation strategies;
Engage stakeholders in the risk management process;
Facilitate employee training on risk management.

Dealing with uncertainties can be more challenging, as you cannot predict them. But the good news is that you can minimize their impact on the project flow. For example, adding time and capacity buffers to project estimates will provide you with the required flexibility so that you’ll be able to respond to unexpected situations and still deliver your projects on time and within budget.

6. Using technologies.

The integration of advanced technologies (AI, machine learning, automation, etc.) revolutionizes both production process and project management. For example, leveraging manufacturing project management software powered by artificial intelligence makes it possible to foresee resource bottlenecks, automate some tasks, optimize resource allocation, etc. This lets manufacturing project managers streamline project flow, optimize resource utilization, and increase efficiency. Let’s consider the capabilities of manufacturing PM tools through the example of Epicflow, multi-project resource management software.

Epicflow helps address major challenges of manufacturing project management in the following ways.

It helps increase resource efficiency.

Manufacturing projects often struggle with workforce shortages and resource constraints. Epicflow optimizes the use of available resources thanks to intelligent resource allocation, ensuring balanced workloads, detecting and eliminating bottlenecks.

It addresses the complexity of manufacturing projects.

Manufacturing workflows can be highly complex involving multiple projects with dependencies. Epicflow simplifies this complexity—it provides a clear, real-time visibility of all ongoing projects with their milestones. You can also divide large and complex projects into phases, which will simplify their management, monitoring, and control. Getting real-time insights helps project managers timely detect any changes and maintain a smooth workflow.

It facilitates flexibility.

When any roadblocks in the workflow occur, Epicflow’s predictive analytics helps project managers find an optimum way to address them: e.g., adjust milestones or reallocate resources. This flexibility will help project managers mitigate the impact of supply chain or any other disruption without negative consequences for the workflow.

It helps prepare for risks and uncertainties.

Epicflow lets you prepare for risks and uncertainties in the following ways:

It forecasts bottlenecks so that you can make adjustments and avoid them;
Its scenario analysis feature lets you play various scenarios and anticipate possible threats in the workflow;
Scenario analysis helps find the most reasonable way to respond to risks;
Epicflow is flexible, so it resets priorities and keeps the project environment safe if any changes occur.

It facilitates data-driven decision-making.

When working in a complex environment of manufacturing projects, making the right decisions can be tough: you have to analyze vast amounts of data, and it’s hard to predict what consequences your decisions will have on the project flow. Epicflow’s AI-powered What-if analysis helps project managers make informed decisions: you can try out different changes to the project environment, see the consequences, and choose an optimal scenario. Reasonable management decisions are the key to seamless project flow and achieving desired outcomes.

It helps manage material resources.

In addition to intelligent human resource management, Epicflow has features for managing equipment, materials, and tools. You can track their availability, capacity, and consumption as well as assign them to tasks. As a result, all your resources involved in the manufacturing process can be managed with one tool.

Therefore, Epicflow empowers manufacturing project managers to address challenges, increase resource efficiency, and improve project outcomes. Contact our experts to learn what innovative solutions Epicflow’s functionality offers to streamline manufacturing project management and deliver high-quality products that meet customer expectations.

Wrap-Up

Manufacturing project management is mostly impacted by the consequences of supply chain disruptions, workforce shortages, increasing demand for products, manufacturing risks and uncertainty, and the complexity of workflows.
To be able to address these challenges effectively, manufacturing project managers should take the following measures: develop flexible plans, minimize bottlenecks and increase resource efficiency, plan resources’ capacity, and prepare for risks and uncertainty.
Manufacturing project management software plays an important role in addressing these challenges, enruing smooth workflow, and achieving expected outcomes.